posted 08-19-2016 08:00 PM               

The remains of the three colonial-age ships were found across a wide "scatter field" of debris on the seafloor about 4 miles (6 kilometers) long and about a half mile (0.8 km) wide, along with the remains of a later shipwreck that is thought to be from the 1800s, Pritchett said.

Divers discovered the shipwrecks during a marine survey of the area in late September 2015 using underwater magnetometer equipment that allowed them to locate metal items lying beneath the seabed...

[Robert Pritchett, chief executive of the Florida-based company Global Marine Exploration] explained that his company had permits from the state of Florida to explore seven areas off the coast of Cape Canaveral, where the wrecks were found — an area littered with debris from rocket test launches at the U.S. Air Force base at Cape Canaveral, southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

"We've found hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of U.S. Air Force rockets that they were testing from 1948 forwards, and also shrimp boats, airplane engines, airplanes, " Pritchett said.

"We have found some of the actual rocket engines, and lots of rocket tubes — some of these things are 30, 40 feet long," he said. "Some are sticking halfway out on the surface, or sticking straight up out of the sand — there are literally thousands of them out there. We GPS and photograph everything we find, and we turn that stuff over to the U.S. Air Force, because one day, it will be valuable to someone for a historical reason."